Ga. 246 looking down on the town of Dillard. The town won’t be so peaceful when crowds gather for the Aug. 21 solar eclipse. FILE PHOTO

“We’ve never had this big of an event in Dillard,” said Enloe, who said they’ve been told to expect tens of thousands of people. “I don’t know if we had a number in our heads, but it was nowhere near what they’re telling us.”

For the past year, the city has been planning a three-day festival that will include music, food and other activities, which will probably create one of the biggest traffic jams the area has ever seen.

There’s enough parking in downtown for 325 vehicles.”Even if we get 20,000 people, I don’t know where they are all going to park,” she said. “We’re just doing the best we can. This thing has really snowballed.”

Hotels, nearby campgrounds and RV parks have been booked for months, and they’re still getting calls every day.

Like Dillard, cities with just a few hundred or a couple of thousand residents will be swamped with huge crowds of moon-gazing folks.

Three years ago, Moody Barrick, public works director for the city of Clayton, and also a hobbyist photographer, was researching tips on photographing a lunar eclipse when he stumbled upon a site about the solar eclipse and realized his community was right along the path of the solar eclipse.

Small North Georgia towns like Clayton are in a prime spot to view the Aug. 21 solar eclipse. CONTRIBUTED BY MOODY BARRICK

“I’ve been excited ever since,” he said. He’s also been planning and practicing his strategy to capture the solar eclipse in images from a community clubhouse in Sky Valley. His enthusiasm is shared by many, and he knows many, many people will be heading to his community.

“I’ve been telling people, this is a very big deal,” he said. “For a while, I wasn’t sure they believed me.”